My husband and I are looking to start a family in the months ahead and my biggest stress about the whole thing is that my small business employer has no maternity leave policy.

I’ll be the first female manager here to get pregnant when it happens so this is uncharted territory where I work. I want to have a plan set in stone because my employer tends to make things up as they go along. It’s horrifying!

One of my coworkers is now pregnant, although she hasn’t officially announced it yet. I’m thinking that this could be an opportunity for my employer to develop a policy and put it in our handbook. They are too small to qualify for FMLA, so we are really starting from scratch.

My questions are:

Do we propose the idea that management come up with an official policy knowing that there are several women in the office headed down this path? Maybe we can suggest that we be a part of the conversation.

Or do we each move forward with our own individual plans, creating a policy for each us separately?

I’m not sure if there is an advantage to doing one or the other, but was wondering if you have any advice.

No Maternity Leave Policy? Make Your Own.

My advice combines your suggestions but with a different angle: I suggest you (and some of your coworkers) craft and draft an “official” policy for management.

See it as a way to initiate the process and the conversation with management. In other words, you will invite them to engage in a collaborative approach to address this issue, refine the specifics, and so on.

You noted they are reactive, not proactive, so I suspect they would welcome this approach that takes most of the work out of their hands.

Be encouraged; some of the best results have been from women working at small business employers where there was no maternity leave policy: they simply followed Max Your Maternity Leave to compose and pitch their own “policy.”

For example, some reported requesting and getting four weeks of paid maternity leave without have to take from their accrued paid time off bank.

Could you do something similar for your workplace? Fit Small Business offers a useful guide for business owners. Can you see where a sample policy could be adapted? Present the policy as a manager bringing a business solution to an impending (and probably ongoing) personnel issue. Position the policy as smart for small business.

Whatever you propose, instead of positioning it as “in stone,” frame it as a starting point for discussion with the emphasis on a collaborative effort to reach mutually agreeable terms. I’m optimistic you’ll be pleased at the overall outcome and your “biggest stress” about starting a family will be replaced by something else!